Many celebrations: cloth, craft, chocolates, and Chicago!

Wow! It’s been an action-packed week – things have been happening so fast I haven’t had a chance to catch up! But here are a few of last week’s highlights:

First, I celebrated a decade of weaving on October 20. Yep, last Thursday marked the 10-year anniversary of my learning to weave! On that fateful day, I brought home an 8-shaft Baby Wolf, and the rest is history.

Here’s my first weaving project:

My first weaving project

And here’s my most recent one:

“Ode to Joy”

Quite a difference!

Second, I went to the American Craft Council conference, “Present Tense,” and had a wonderful time! It kicked off with a tasting of craft whiskeys:

The Balvenie Scotch tasting

And I gave a talk. Here’s Chris Amundsen, the executive director of the American Craft Council (who wrote the Foreword for my book Master Your Craft), about to introduce me for my “Creative Blocks” talk:

Tien and Chris Amundsen at “Present Tense” talk

I’m pleased to say that the talk went well! The audience was engaged, and we had some great conversation about common creative blocks and how to address them. Much to my interest, one of the most common creative blocks was time and time management. When I got home, I wrote a Creating Craft blog post about finding time for studio work – which seems to have struck a chord: it’s already had more Facebook shares than anything else I’ve written in 14 years of blogging! I’m so glad people are finding it useful – if you are grappling with not enough studio time, check it out! I hope you will find it useful as well.

I also discovered that both the American Craft Council’s magazine American Craft and the Surface Design Association’s publication Surface Design Journal are planning to run reviews of Master Your Craft. And Schiffer Publishing is getting ready to send flyers to 1,000+ craft schools to sell Master Your Craft. So lots of good news there!

Pivoting to chocolate, Chocolates for Charity is now done, and brought in over $4,550 for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Thank you to all who donated! It’s a great cause; the money will fund some great textile programs and exhibits in the coming months.

And here’s a photo of this year’s chocolate haul, 112 pounds of Valrhona chocolate:

112 pounds of Valrhona chocolate

Finally, I’m pleased to say that I’ve been invited to give a lecture at SOFA Chicago! This is a large and renowned craft show – one of the top shows for gallery-represented artists/artisans. This is where collectors come to buy high-end craft. Most of the lecturers are very well-known artists sponsored by equally well-known galleries, so this is quite an honor. My talk will be on Saturday, November 5, from 4:30-5:30 in Room B, followed by a book signing from 5:30-6:30pm in the Schiffer Publishing booth. More details at http://www.sofaexpo.com/2016/lecture-series . (For those who would like to attend – SOFA Chicago will be held at Festival Hall, Navy Pier, 600 East Grand Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 .)